A Google driverless car has been involved in an accident with a bus and Google has said it “bears some responsibility” for the first time. The company admitted that it was partially responsible for the minor collision, which happened earlier in February. The collision which happened in February, 2016 which go down in record books as the first accident where an autonomous car has hit another vehicle. On 14 February the car, travelling at 2mph (3km/h), pulled out in front of a public bus going 15mph (24km/h). The car, a Lexus SUV, was attempting to navigate around some sandbags at a speed of 2mph, when it hit the bus, which was travelling at 15 mph, according to a report filed with California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The human driver in the Google vehicle stated that he assumed the bus would slow down to let the car out, and so he did not override the car’s self-driving computer. According to the report, the crash happened in Mountain View, near Google’s headquarters. After going around the sandbags, the car moved back into the centre of the lane, striking the side of the bus, causing damage to the left front fender, the front wheel and a driver side sensor. In a statement, Google said: “We clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved, there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.”
